Category: Good to Know

This week our photo prompt for our weekly Foto Rx photo project is ‘white on white (or clear on white). This is another one of those prompts for when you are feeling like you have nothing to photograph, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to be able to pull beautiful images from this simple exercise. The best part of this prompt is you won’t need expensive props, a willing model or epic location, just a few simple objects and some light and you may have yourself a masterpiece!

It’s not too late to start your Foto Rx 52, shooting consistently will be the fastest way to becoming a better photographer. Follow us on Instagram for more inspo and edit examples. Shoot this week’s prompt and use #fotorx52 so we can find you and cheer you on (also feel free to borrow our hashtags so other people can find you!).

In an attempt to get out all the goodness we want to share with you I’m going to try a ‘Five for Friday’, it seems as if I am always jotting down little notes and thinking ‘we should write a post about that’ and then well, this little thing called life gets in the way. So here’s to trying new things…

I. We are doing lines at Foto Rx Co. (for our #FotoRx52 of course)! I have been racked with angst since I started the project, which is the opposite of what a photo project is supposed to do, this week it felt like my photo rut was finally lifting (a perk when you are shooting regularly) and I was able to see these power lines with new eyes. I am so happy how they turned out and instead of hating on the power lines per norm, I am looking forward to seeing them in a new light.

II. I just finished this book and I am in AWE of how the author so expertly and seamlessly navigated a story with multiple narrators and got each and every narrators voice so authentic, just totally inspired writing!

III. One of my new year’s goals was to master the cat eye. I was having a heap of failure, then I realized that I have hooded eyes and needed to do things a little differently. If you have hooded eyes and need help here are some tutorials to help 1 / 2 / 3

V. If you missed it, we have two incredibly inspiring posts up for those that love to dabble in the painterly world without getting themselves dirty. Our ‘blur on purpose’ resource is top notch (and I am LOVING this technique) and the digital painting tools that are free with your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription has me ‘painting’ and drawing my head off!

Every year Michelle and I sit down and come up with a mantra/motto for the year ahead. Last year we had ‘It’s on’ and we still feel the same way, we are in full steam ahead mode. Michelle joked that 2018 should be ‘It’s still on,’ it is indeed! We wanted to move forward with something that felt every bit as kick a@! and decided on Veni Vidi Vici Latin for I came, I saw, I conquered.

We wanted to go through a little recap of what we accomplished last year, something we highly recommend you doing as well as you just might surprise yourselves like we did. We have not reaped the financial rewards (to the degree we wanted yet) of all our labors and I think that made it feel like we didn’t accomplish as much as we did, but to see it in writing made us realize what we did accomplish and that we have put into motion something big, something that has legs! We so want that for you too, there’s that quote ‘a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle,’ we wholeheartedly believe that and we hope to always be able to be a ‘light’ for you and others. Here’s to a year filled with laughter, health, creativity and prosperity.

What we accomplished in 2017:

Last year we launched 3 photo editing sets for Foto Rx–Portland, Stockholm, and Vintage Foto Fix. Portland quickly becoming one of our #1 sellers! These sets take a ton of brain power, testing and branding before we launch, one a year would be great so getting 3 out was outstanding! We already have new products set in motion for 2018!

We delved deep into Lightroom, so deep that we will be launching presets in 2018!

We had a full-on photo shoot with model, make-up artist and stylist. This was a huge deal for us, since almost everything in our portfolio is still life/product based. Not only was the shoot a blast, it was a huge success with each image exceeding our expectations (and our bar is high).

We went down to Los Angeles to scout a location for a photo studio, putting into motion another dream realized–regular visits to a sunny clime and a space to shoot uninterrupted for a few days a month.

We set-up a personal shoot with a model where we art directed, location scouted, styled and shot. It was a lot of work, but the images were worth the effort and made our minds percolate with all the possibilities.

We launched a font foundry! That was an enormous undertaking, 4 years in the making, we had to create a brand, site and a marketing game plan (to name a few things;) We launched with 4 fonts and all four of them made it into the hot 50 on My Fonts, an unheard of accomplishment for a new foundry. With this project we were able to help many of the artists we admire create a new passive income stream to allow them to focus on creating more of their dreams.

We have big plans for 2018, we hope to share some of them with you and hear some of yours (let’s make ourselves accountable). Happy New Year friends!

This quote, oh, this quote makes my heart sing and has me feeling all 21 kinds of inspired, you? We haven’t been here much because of getting all our ducks in a row (yes, we are going to go super heavy on any and all bird references from here on out) for the upcoming launch of our font foundry, but in case you aren’t on Instagram you may not have been aware that we announced another artist we have collaborated with to create a stunningly elegant font, and that is the one and only Karla Lim of Written Word Calligraphy! We were wowed by her lettering from the get go and to be able to turn her beautiful lettering into a font just feels so surreal. This whole project, to be honest feels a bit surreal. I honestly can not believe we are opening our very own font foundry? Can you?

I hate being one of those bloggers that apologizes for being absent from their blog, because that used to annoy the heck out of me when I saw that but I feel like not apologizing for our long absence feels kind of wrong too. Just know we are thinking of you, and we are even thinking hard on what we want this space to be for the future, how best to get you beautiful + useful information since nobody is really visiting blogs anymore, we need to figure out how this is going to work moving forward because I for one love a spot where I can share what we love and what we learned without having to go blind typing on my Iphone. So there’s that…Anyways, this is what we are up to along with our Photoshop actions and soon to launch PRESETS and oh, yeah, a photo + photo editing workshop in the near-ish future. We are busy, but never too busy for you;)

If you are feeling like this blog is going to the Birds, you are so right! We are once again, hot and heavy, nose to the grindstone in launch mode. It always gets quiet around here when we are getting ready to launch a project. As we mentioned last week we are launching a font foundry?! What?! That is crazy talk! Crazy exciting! It has been a very long and arduous process, it is so hard to articulate the excitement we are feeling (and the nerves and stress and all that other stuff that comes with launching something this big).

We just wanted to pop in today and reveal one of our first artists for Rare Bird Font Foundry. Can we tell you how difficult it has been, not to shout from the rooftops that we are working with the one and only Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls? Maybelle is the doyenne of modern calligraphy, I had been worshiping her from afar for many years before we finally met and this, this well? It all seems so surreal. We are all humbled and honored to have her hand in our font foundry launch line up. So, needless to say it may be quiet here again until launch, but we will be thinking of you and we hope you follow along with our little project. I have linked below to where you can sign-up to be the first to know.

P.S. We are announcing our second artist tomorrow on Insta! It’s another really, really good one!

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Besotted is an inspired visual repository of what we are currently in love with, carefully culled and curated by photographer/designers Tristan B. + Michelle P. Here you will find a wealth of creative resources and inspiration.